One of the most treasured items that gets hauled out of storage in our household each Christmas season is the crêche, or Nativity scene. Ours is a simple affair. It is composed of wooden folk-art figures made, as I recall, in Costa Rica.

In a conversation with some students recently I made reference to Wycliffe College’s Six Principles, and was met with blank stares. I do not fault the students. The fact is that we don’t talk about the Principles nearly as much as we did when I began teaching here in the late 1990s.

In late October I attended a conference at Yale commemorating the centenary of Hans Frei (1922-1988), one of the leading historical theologians of our age, and the most important figure in the so-called “Yale School” of theology and scriptural interpretation.

Ours is not a time of rest. I need not enumerate the many troubles that we face today, but it should be uncontroversial to point out that we live in a world ever more enveloped by fear. And who can blame us twenty-first century folk for suspecting that danger lurks in the shadows of every path?

I can recall as a pre-school infant asking my parents about the likelihood of nuclear war, which seemed an ever-present danger in the UK of the early 1970s.

Do you, like me, have a complicated relationship with the news?

Do you, like me, have a complicated relationship with the news? I find it almost magnetic—I want to know “what is going on,” to think myself part of current social dramas. I also find the news disorienting and discomfiting—it depicts a world out of control.

I recently had the opportunity of spending two weeks in Rome as part of a course on Anglican Ecclesiology and Ecumenism. The course, ably taught by Prof. Matthew Olver of Nashotah House seminary and Dr.

Occasionally, when I’m out in the wild, someone might see my ID and notice that little “Dr.” in front of my name. The next comment often goes something like: “Oh, you’re a doctor!